Steffi Domike moved to the Pittsburgh area to work as an electrician's apprentice at United States Steel's Clairton Coke Works. During her tenure there, she emerged as an active member of USWA Local 1557 and represented the local in the USWA District 15 Civil Rights Committee. In 1979, she ran for recording secretary of the local. Domike was involved in Steelworkers Stand Up, a newsletter which described problems and spread notice of important union events at the Clairton Coke Works and other mills. She also played an active role in women's rights within the steel industry by contributing to Women of Steel newsletters and organizing meetings prior to the 1976 USWA International Constitutional Convention in which amendments regarding union women's rights were to be presented. After being laid off in 1982 with thousands of other steelworkers, Domike joined the Mon Valley Unemployed Steelworkers Committee ("Steelworkers" was later removed) and their St. Peter's Church Food Bank, located in McKeesport. She also enrolled in the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh Film Makers to study filmmaking. With three other women from the Mon Valley Unemployed Committee (MVUC), Domike used student interviewers to create an oral history project and book called Crashin' Out: Hard Times in McKeesport which compared the decline of the steel industry in the 1980s with the Great Depression of the 1930s. Domike and three other MVUC committee members also produced Women of Steel, an award winning 1985 documentary about the lives of three women steelworkers. Her other film and television projects include: Life Without Father, Out of this Furnace: A Walking Tour of Thomas Bell's Novel, the instructional program Win-Win Bargaining, and the WQED TV series Labor's Corner. Probably her most influential film is the 1992 documentary The River Ran Red. Co-produced with Nicole Fauteux, this film documents the conflict between the steelworkers and the Carnegie Steel Company and Pinkerton Guards at Homestead in 1892. The film is complemented by a collection of source readings, compiled by Domike and Fauteux, with the same title. Domike continues to work as an activist and has recently created a board game with Lisa Freeland which takes a critical look at the Patriot Act. She has also created various works of art on feminist, environmentalist, and labor themes.
From the description of Papers of Steffi Domike, 1946-1994. (University of Pittsburgh). WorldCat record id: 50820440
